An archive of found family photos and artifacts for genealogists and historians.

Welcome!

I reunite identified family photos that I find in antique shops and second hand stores with genealogists and family historians. If you see one of your ancestors here and would like to obtain the original, feel free to contact me. Donations of pre-1920 photographs are also most welcome. I hope you enjoy your visit!~The Archivist

Friday, April 25, 2014

Analyzing Possible Relationships in a Photograph: Is This Really the Samuel Pollock Family from Ontario?

My recent find of two sporadically-filled cabinet card/cdv albums in a local thrift shop has been a bit of a challenge. Most of the photographs are not inscribed on the actual photograph, but rather, occasionally labelled on the album insert pages. Most of the photographs that appear with handwritten notations seem to fit: a cabinet card of four men labelled "The 4 Jacks - Hauled Milk to Molesworth Cheese Factory" A Jack Pollock is indicated with an X. The inscription seems to make sense. How about this one on a later page?

The above cabinet card photograph was taken at the A.C. Washburn Studio on Queen Street in Kincardine, Ontario, probably in the latter part of the 1880s because of the style of dress, and because the photograph card stock has cut-out scalloped-style edging which was starting to become popular at the time.

Sam and Clara Pollock appear in the 1881 census living in Grey Township, Huron County, Ontario with their daughter, Charlott R. Pollock, born about 1877.1 When I set out to find Louise in the 1891 census, Charlotte's younger sister is listed as "Alphitte," born about 1882.2 I found Lucinda Alphretta Pollock's birth record, and confirmed her birthdate of 20 March 1882.3
Lucinda Alphretta appears to have married Vincent Leeson, and is recorded as "Louise" in the 1911 census.4 Do the girls in the photograph appear to be about five years apart? What about the man and woman? We know from the census records that Clara is reported to be born around 1851, making her 2-3 years older than Samuel. Does that look about right?

Well, I wasn't sure. When I discovered that a Pollock descendant on Ancestry.com had an image of Samuel and Clara, I had to contact them to see if they'd share that image with me. They did, and I am now fairly confident that this is, indeed, a portrait of the Samuel Pollock family, circa 1888-89. The owner has kindly let me post their image here:

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About Me

I am a member of the Assocation of Professional Genealogists, The National Genealogical Society, Ohio Genealogical Society and various other local genealogy groups.
I've been working on my own family tree for about 30 years now.

A Note about Accuracy

Identification and research is often based upon information found in a handwritten notation on a photograph. The assumption is that the written identification is correct, but at the same time, know that errors could have been made, especially when the identification was added to the photo many years after the image was created. The only way to absolutely verify the identity of a person in one of these photographs, even after careful research, is to compare the image in question to another known photograph.